The point I was trying to make was: The Italians know how to make an espresso machine.A good friend of mine has had a Marzocco GS3 since it came out, and is still on No 1. I am on No 4, within one year.I suspect the Made-in-Italy haters have not owned a single product made in Italy ...[

"Made-in-Italy haters" is a little strong. As someone who has deep and centuries old connections to Italy, I love traveling it Italy and appreciate many things about Italy, including their way of making coffee. But Italians are notorious for making troublesome industrial products, especially when machine or moving parts are involved. Would anyone who has spent time in Italy claim that work comes first for most Italians? They have other more important things that interest them.

As far as made in China products go, there are two basic classes of products made there. The first group consists of those products reverse engineered, manufactured, and sold by Chinese owned companies. They do reverse engineer products (I know a North American engineer who works in China doing that with heavy equipment) and produce what, on the surface, appears to be a direct copy of a much more expensive machine or other product. I consider many of those products to be more or less junk as they too often cut corners on the quality of the metal and other components used. The second group of products includes those made under contract to non-Chinese companies or in factories owned by non-Chinese companies. We all use those products sold by companies that are household names, and they are among the best products that we can buy. Chinese workers do produce many good products. One does not need to be a barista or even like coffee to assemble an espresso machine.

If you look on a Ferrari or any other European made car, chances are that you will find parts made in China. One day while I was waiting for someone, I looked over our new European diesel car; it had parts on it from virtually every continent and many countries.

I also would not focus too much on someone going through four BDBs in one year. While I don't doubt the veracity of that account, that is not the norm. Are there other explanations for that than product quality? Water? Power supply? Or?? We have two BDB machines - both A models - and neither has needed any service or repair. They have made lots of good coffee.

The water? Power supply? .... why would that cause the dial to fog up on a machine fresh out of the box?? Some magical thinking on donner's part here?Or?? Maybe it is just me? Donner, please illuminate, what could I be doing wrong here? Maybe it will help prolong the life of my machine!

The water? Power supply? .... why would that cause the dial to fog up on a machine fresh out of the box?? Some magical thinking on donner's part here?Or?? Maybe it is just me? Donner, please illuminate, what could I be doing wrong here? Maybe it will help prolong the life of my machine!

The water? Power supply? .... why would that cause the dial to fog up on a machine fresh out of the box?? Some magical thinking on donner's part here?Or?? Maybe it is just me? Donner, please illuminate, what could I be doing wrong here? Maybe it will help prolong the life of my machine!

i feel i need to come in here as reading the thread and the moment that china thing came i said well this nonsense will be a bit longer than getting a help for a prob that i get. anyway

i leave here in the philippines so here are the thing "everyone" outside the "third world", WE THE THIRD WORLD HAS CHEAP "EFFICIENT" LABOR OR MAN POWER. A $3000/month programmer's work in the states can be done here at less than $1000/month and better programs. ok so lets get more detailed and concert lets go to manufacturing and assembly lines. ive explained already the BPO business process outsourcing (simple labor practice - pay $3000/programmer for 100 heads or $800/programmer for 100 heads - same or better output remember that)

we what we call Economic Zones - now these were build to address the countries unemployeement rate due to lack of educational attainment. so what are these, big big big manufacturing and assembly lines. you dont need to graduate college or with a degree to push a button right. and china has these since japan's land cost very high, big manufacturers have to move out or place an extension plan in china, low land cost and cheap labor. same here in the philippines, we are in competition with china on cheap man power and with india, so when big corps. will be like "plant in the philippines or in china, how about india" and most of the time china wins due to availability of major business area, hongkong, macau, shanghai and near japan. so we are done with those lets move to what people are arguing here durability.

do you say durability? well simple answer yes and no. asian manufacturing became notorious with fake items before, bags and others. Why? durability was a par, look at your nike shoes now. china or pakistan. anyway a classic example is ray ban sunglasses, when underground manufacturing started pirating - they did the same sunglass under a different brand and it didnt hit the market, so they changed the logo and boom, same quality but just pirated brand.

then the two path came in - just like what was mentioned here reversed engineering. here in the philippines almost everywhere you see poor neighborhood. what can they afford? simple logic of they "cant save" $50 to buy good shoe, they can only afford $3, i mean tomorrow they have worry where to get even a $1 - so thing about that, but they still need shoes and you are talking about millions are into this, so give them a $3 shoe, cut off all quality that makes it $50 and just drop it to $3 and they'll buy it, and this works - this is you answer to durability and the bad rep for china or third world outsourced.

so what about the espresso? so here it is, we have here TIMEX, TELESCOPES, SEMI CONDUCTORS, CAMERA LENSES to name a few, so if you thing espresso machine are delicate then those are mentioned are also delicate and they are done here. so you question durability? simple answer to that. do you know what ISO 9000 and stuff means? check those labels, they are international standards, you dont get certified if you dont pass. Big corp dont outsource to you if you dont have those, or big corp wants their plant certified to assure customers that they are dealing with a good company. what does this tells you, this tells you that you are dealing with the otherside of outsourcing, this is not the reverse engineering side this is the outsourcing side.

these are in the assembly line push a button and stuff or check it, its would say assembled in china or in a third world, US part, UK parts, Japan parts.

dont mix up your bad reputation of china with the outsourcing.

i hope this clarifies bad rep china made and 3rd world outsource and plants, so people dont go argue about its made in china vs made in italy

of course there are ways to source out extra money but im just putting in the per cup and the wait, coffee per coffee per cup, coffee money for coffee, gas money for gas

how long will it take me to save up ?$/day to reach vivII and then to gs3 while spending $2/double shot on a local cafe for coffee being pulled using a LM mistral $24,000.so i will take me 500 orders to spend $1000 that is worth vivIItwice a day gives me 250 orders or 250 days which is 8.3 monthsso if im not to order any coffee then that will be 8.3months to go until i get vivIIso far let me ask you this, how many times have you seen you bdb says clean me up - which is 200 shots?so have i saved a lot by owning the machine already?after how a year i would have saved enough to buy another partical machine and an upgraded version of ittrack record? i will wait 3 years to see if its durable and how much ive saved and i will say that would it be worth it not to drink coffee for 8.3 months just to have a machine that will last for 5 more years?can you live without coffee for a month?

AFAIK there's two new "dual boiler" models coming from Breville, BES 980 and BES 920.The 980 has inbuilt grinder with automated dose and tamp. I guess you could say it's kind of in-between a semi-auto and a bean to cup machine.The 920 has claimed improved steam performance ("3 bar steam boiler"?), different/better design on group filter holder, claimed improved shot dose metering, and is able to be user-descaled. That's all good, but one comment I read is that wattage is increased to 2400W. I'm not sure how that's adapted for a 115V model - even in 230V markets they probably have to switch between elements, as >10A power demand isn't normal for a plug-in appliance.

The China vs Italy nonsense is nonsense. You buy an espresso machine "made in China" from a domestic appliance maker - and you get exactly that - a chinese made domestic appliance. It will be manufactured and assembled by people who don't know what espresso is, couldn't afford it if they did know, and have no "connection" with the concept. A "kaizen" like concept of Total Quality Management is completely absent, quality control something which must be enforced from top-down. Breville seem to do okay at this, but it's very naive to think that you're getting more than you're paying for.

According to Matt at Breville USA customer service, Breville IS coming out this fall with different levels of the BDB, the basic model (what we have now) and a higher end model with a rotary pump ( and I assume the ability to descale)

Let's please remember to keep this thread civil and stick to discussions about various impressions and aspects about the machine. No need to get into arguments about merits of where a product was manufactured.

mysonssecondword: it sucks you've had so many bad units, but I'm glad breville lived up to it and replaced them. I do know that the condensation in the pressure gauge is something that can be there right out of the box but go away after a few weeks. That's what happened with mine, when I first got it i couldn't read the pressure gauge but after 4 days of use it cleared up and the condensation hasn't come back.

OC: That's really good to know, I'm hoping that the "9" in it's incredibly good looking matte black comes out similar to the prototype at SCAA. If it does I'm going to be very tempted to sell my bdb and get the new version... time to start saving.

Symbols: = New Posts since your last visit = No New Posts since last visit = Newest post

Forum Rules:No profanity, illegal acts or personal attacks will be tolerated in these discussion boards.No commercial posting of any nature will be tolerated; only private sales by private individuals, in the "Buy and Sell" forum.No SEO style postings will be tolerated. SEO related posts will result in immediate ban from CoffeeGeek.No cross posting allowed - do not post your topic to more than one forum, nor repost a topic to the same forum.Who Can Read The Forum? Anyone can read posts in these discussion boards.Who Can Post New Topics? Any registered CoffeeGeek member can post new topics.Who Can Post Replies? Any registered CoffeeGeek member can post replies.Can Photos be posted? Anyone can post photos in their new topics or replies.Who can change or delete posts? Any CoffeeGeek member can edit their own posts. Only moderators can delete posts.Probationary Period: If you are a new signup for CoffeeGeek, you cannot promote, endorse, criticise or otherwise post an unsolicited endorsement for any company, product or service in your first five postings.